Dread and Wonder Before the Dawn of Time
by Glenstorm63
Summary: Prequel to The Magician's Nephew. Before Nellie the Laundress and Frank the Cabbie plied their trades in London, they grew up and worked in the English Midlands. These first chapters describe their traumatic and mysterious experiences before leaving for London.
1. Chapter 1: The Linen Room & The Bed Room

**Dread and Wonder Before the Dawn of Time**

Foreword:

In considering Frank and Helen's possible backgrounds, I have chosen to use the story of my own great-grandparents' personal histories as a vehicle, with significant changes to their fates and a fanciful fiction to fill in the gaps of what we don't know.

However, the locations mentioned, most family members and relationships are completely real and as accurately described as I can manage. I have been creative with dates as the Frank and Helen of Narnia were probably born a little later than the characters. Of course instead of ending up in South Australia with two children, they will arrive in Narnia with none. But the great care, respect and love they had for each other as they survive and thrive in a new land and create a family in a special place will be the same. Enjoy the ride.

Key References:

· The Southams of Barunga, the family of George and Elizabeth Southam who arrived in Australia, September 1877 (Chris O'Loughlin 1998)

· Google Maps

· Wikipedia

 **Chapter 1: The Linen Room and The Bed Room**

Summary: Nellie Peachey is caught on the horns of a dilemma as she tries to escape the abuses of her employer's son and keep her job as she pines for her dearly departed mother's company and wisdom.

Notes: My own great-grand-mother's actual employer in Stretton-on-Fosse is unknown but this scenario possibly captures some of the pain and powerlessness that she may have experienced.

…

Tuesday 29 February 1876

Lansdowne House, Stretton-on-Fosse

...

Nellie Elizabeth Peachey climbed quietly up the dark back stairs, struggled with the catch, nudged the door open and edged warily into the upper linen room. Dull winter light from a small high window slanted into the cheerless space, revealing a young woman of small frame, with a broad honest face framed with dark hair pulled back in a bun. Her face was tight with anxiety and it had been so for some weeks. She dumped the heavy armload of clean bedsheets she had been struggling with on the shelf, carefully arranged them into a neat stack with shaking fingers, quietly closed the cupboard door, flung herself onto the single hard chair and began to cry. There was no-one to see her tears.

She had good reason to cry. She longed for the comfort of her mother Thirza. She would have known what to do. At least she would have had wise words to help calm her eldest daughter, so she could find her own way forward. But her mother, aged twenty-eight had died in childbirth in Ascott-under-Wychwood with her eighth child nine years ago on a day of frantic searching for a doctor who never came. She had been only twenty-eight and Nellie only ten. She had been laid to rest in a little graveyard in Churchill, her unmarked grave strewn with simple violets. But that was 13 miles away from the big Lansdowne house in Stretton-on-Fosse, where Nellie now laboured in terror; too far to consider a visit to her mother's graveside. Her work was fourteen hours a day, seven days a week.

The injustice and powerlessness she was experiencing was overwhelming and had already gone on far too long. Her nervousness was causing Nellie to drop things. She was lying anxiously awake in her narrow bed and the housekeeper had taken to scolding her for taking too long with tasks… such as her work on laundering and ironing the sheets of the master's son.

The stack of neatly folded linen she had just lugged up the stairs and put away included the very sheets that only the day before, she had been flung upon, whilst young Master Hendry Lansdowne first of all declared his love for her, then made threats followed by pushing himself painfully into her and exerting himself whilst mouthing obscenities until finally he collapsed on top of her. It was the third time in the last month and the third time she had found herself scrubbing and washing the shameful stains from the linen. It was her appointed task to see to his bedding and linen and empty his chamber pot when he was home.

The threats had held each time and she had kept quiet, but her life in the house was now a terror whenever he was home.

Her steps were dogged by Master Hendry's relentless attentions and it was only the impropriety of his entry into these servant-only spaces which was keeping him at bay. Every creak of the floorboards was setting her on edge. If the Lansdowne family had been richer and larger she might have settled for being a simple laundry maid and been paid somewhat less but at least she wouldn't have had to go upstairs unaccompanied, let alone into his bedroom.

She had tried to time her visits to his bedroom until he was down eating his horrible breakfasts of porridge, kippers, devilled kidneys and toasted bread with marmalade... And the disgusting bitter coffee that he had brewed, she had heard from the scullery maid who had once tasted the dregs. But sometimes other tasks were forced on her before she could hurry into his room to strip his bed linen twice a week and he had the habit of returning to his bedroom immediately after breakfast to retrieve some belonging or other. Yesterday he must have had made his excuses early and he had cornered her again before she could escape or hide.

…


	2. Chapter 2: Dismissed & Pursed

**Chapter 2: Dismissed and Pursed**

Summary: Nellie suffers further by being expelled from her place of work.

Notes: My own grand-mother's place of work is unknown. The Lansdowne House and family is thus a fiction. But it is certain that she was "taken advantage of" by one of the men who was associated with where she had gone into service after she had left her stepmother to look after the family. She was dismissed when she was in a more advanced state of pregnancy than appears in this story and married her betrothed who was himself "born out of wedlock" when she was eight months pregnant.

…

Lansdowne House & The Green, Stretton-on-Fosse

Monday 8th May 1876

…

Ten weeks later, there was no hiding anything. Nellie had endured the ignominy of the glances and judgement of the house servants as she retched over her porridge and the horrified recognition by the mistress who had stopped her in the upstairs hallway and demanded to see her in the full spring sunlight.

She was served notice and escorted to the back door by a grim faced housekeeper, her only belongings clutched shakily in her brown carpetbag. But just before she was finally evicted, Nellie had heard shouting. It was Mr Lansdowne, berating his son.

"And this hasn't been the first time! Don't think I don't know it! Do you think you're going to spend your whole life taking advantage of those of lower station than you? And I sent you into law for God's sake! She is being sent away you know. We can't keep her here, but you are not getting away with this. I am reducing your allowance for the next three months by half and if it happens again I shall reduce it even more!"

It was the nurse Mary-Ann Bartlett, who was entrusted to run after Nellie down the lane and press into her hands the purse heavy with silver and copper coins. Mary-Ann was in tears, for everyone knew the housekeeper's rigid morals and all had heard the master's voice so they all knew Nellie would not be coming back. It was clear that this was far less than the young Master Hendry would probably spend in a single month, but it was also more than most of them would have ever been able to accumulate in a two year period. It seemed a small fortune and she knew Nellie was lucky to get it. She'd heard of others turfed out in similar circumstances with barely the clothes on their backs.

Nellie accepted the tearful hug from Mary-Ann and fumbling with the buckles of her carpet bag, managed to slip the purse safely inside. Bolstered by that a little, Nellie continued down the lane towards The Green, wondering where she might go next.

Ascott-under-Wychwood was over twenty miles away and too far to walk at this end of the day. And impossible anyway. Within two years of her mother's death, Nellie's father had married a girl little older than herself, "to look after the little ones", but who had begun to produce almost as many as she had adopted with astonishing rapidity and regularity. The little thatched cottage in the row was now far too small for all of them. It was one of the reasons Nellie had gone into service. No, she could not return there.

There was only one person she really wanted to see but she was not sure what he would think about all that had gone wrong. She had hopes. For he had taken his mother's maiden name, did not know his own father and he knew the bitter sting of the name 'bastard'. They had become engaged only eight months ago when Frank was home on his annual holiday and had met a year before that at a village fair, not long after she had begun work in the village. His name was Frank George Southam and he was working as a farm labourer about seven miles away. His grandparents and mother lived right here in The Fosse.

No, it was his grandparents she was more concerned about. She hoped they might be prepared to let her stay on the strength of the engagement, which had been solemnified over a mash of tea and a biscuit in their house. But if they refused, and called her names she was afraid even Frank would turn away.

Nellie turned left and wandered down The Green. After wavering at the crossroads, she crossed Belcony and onto The Sharries. She was quite disoriented, knowing she ought to know her way to the Southam's cottage, for the village was little more than a large hamlet with only a few streets, but she was unable to work out her next steps. Her carpetbag banged her shins and she blundered into a low wall bruising her shins even more, and sat down heavily.

A blackbird was singing in a nearby bramble thicket and the horse-chestnuts in the field were in bloom. A bee buzzed past and circled her several times before settling in some dandelions at her feet. But there was nothing to cheer her. She was three months pregnant, she had lost her first real job and escaped further abuses by her employer's son only to face an unknown future. The tears were starting again, but Nellie held them in and just stared mournfully into the mid-distance listening to the blackbird.

She sent a heartfelt prayer to God, to Jesus, to the Saints, to the Fairies, to whomever might listen. She needed intercession…

…


	3. Chapter 3: Green Herbs & Stained Lace

**Chapter 3: Green Herbs and Stained Lace**

Summary: By "chance" Nellie falls into the company of a mysterious old woman who befriends her and gives her a place to stay.

Notes: This chapter departs sharply from the real history of my own great-grand-mother in Stretton-on-Fosse into complete fantasy. This chapter presages the later chapters which will show how Nellie is touched by Faerie, thus preparing her uniquely for her future as Queen Helen of Narnia.

…

Monday 8th May 1876

The Sharries, Stretton-on-Fosse

…

It was a little old woman who came tap-tapping briskly along the gravelly street in worn black boots. A russet plaid shawl was about her shoulders, and a battered Welsh hat on her head, stained lace peeping out from under the brim. She was leading a fat grey mare with rush panniers laden with wayside herbs. She also had a little brass sickle at her waist, so Nellie realised she must have been foraging in the hedgerows. Nellie had made a many a meal out of hedgerow herbs to keep her siblings full, particularly following her mother's final pregnancy, and she looked intently out of the corner of her eye at the harvest. Nellie could see fat-hen and lambs lettuce, spearmint, dandelion and chicory, as well as mugwort, rue, pennyroyal and a grey herb with purple flowers she didn't know.

When the old woman came up to Nellie she stopped and looked up. Her eyes were nearly as bright as the hat buckle that glistened in the afternoon sunlight. It was that brightness that drew Nellie further out of her reverie. She focused and then started as she looked deep into the old woman's shrewd eyes. They were brown, just like polished hazelnuts. The mare snorted and whuffled, standing patiently.

"Now dearie, what would you be doin' sittin' on a wall all by yourself on such a fine afternoon? She looked Welsh, but her accent was almost Irish.

Nellie just looked glumly back, swallowed and then said. "I've lost me first job… and, and… I've taken a big tumble… and I'm sittin' here wondrin' what next."

Her lips quivered, she blinked and a tear squeezed out and ran down her cheek.

"There, there, there!" said the old woman. "That is surely somethin' to cry about. Tell you what, why don't you come along the street a short step and you con com' in and 'ave a noice coppa tea with me and tell me all about it."

Nellie was a little nonplussed, but as there was nothing better to do, she got up, picked up her carpet bag with all her worldly possessions and followed the horse and old woman about five cottages down the row and round the corner.

Then a little further on, just where the road bent slightly to go up Tankards Hill, there was a mossy gate into a small field and beyond that a tiny cottage. The old lady unhooked each of the baskets with surprising strength and agility, leaned them against the fence and opened the gate. She unbuckled and removed the harness and patting the mare's rump, to send her into the field, she called softly "Thanks to you once again Liath! I'll see you on the morrow!" before closing the gate.

A little further up the lane was a rustic arched gate and a short gravel path up to a small cottage all on its own. There were late purple crocus and double red poppies blooming and even a few early foxgloves, startlingly apricot coloured. A holly tree with three tall stems held its glossy leaves up into the sun. The yellow Cotswold stone walls of the cottage gleamed like gold in the spring sunlight and the door and window frames were jet black. Traveller's Joy twined through an arched trellis over the doorway. A little brass bell hung there on a chain.

Nellie would have been enchanted, but she was in such a state, it was as much as she could do to clutch her carpet bag tightly and step nervously over the threshold.

Inside, the house was clean and tidy and smelled of lavender. It was only three rooms. A front sitting room held cedar and rush chairs and a small oval table. Pale yellow curtains ruffled in the breeze which came in through the open window. Another bee came buzzing in, circled the room three times and went out again.

There was a short corridor with a door for one room to the right, the old lady's bedroom, she thought and at the back a little kitchen and scullery. Through a small window Nellie could see there was a narrow path that ran down to a wall and a gate, and a little outhouse under a pink hawthorn just coming into bloom.

Nellie finally overcame her nervousness enough to put her carpetbag down and accepted the offer of a cup of tea. It was she who carried the pot up the hall and they sat and talked in the bright sitting room. Nellie poured out her troubles. The old woman listened intently.

"Aye, well... I knew at once that somethin' of the sort was bothrin' you. See, you're such a bright young thing, but 'twas like you was a star under a cloud."

She hesitated as if weighing up if Nellie could take what she was going to say next.

"The truth be told, that young master is known for this sort of t'ing. You're the third fallen maiden to have crossed this threshold to tell the tale you see."

Nellie had heard that previous maids in the Lansdowne household had been dismissed in the past and had wondered, but to all end up here? She looked at the old woman with some surprise.

The old woman nodded sagely. "Oh… yes, most of the girls in this village who've fallen on hard times find their way to my door at some point. Sometimes they're too late to be sure, but whether its chance or fate... or something else working itself out, who knows?"

She smiled at Nellie kindly. "And there you was, just a'settin' on that wall, when I'd just come back from cuttin' me 'erbs."

"Somethin's fated here", she added cryptically and then in a mumbled undertone, "And it might be time for him to face _his_ fate. Third time pays for those who take weres frige in vain." Nellie only caught half of it and wondered if the old woman was wandering in her mind.

It was then that Nellie finally realised that she didn't even have a name for the kind old woman and said "I'm quite remiss Mrs, but I haven't asked your name. I've never seen or heard of you before, even though I've worked here two years, so I don't know what to call you".

"Have you not?" asked the old woman, tilting her head on one side, "Well, I never! As for that, I s'pose you could be callin' me... Mrs Macha I think. Yes. That could be right, Mrs Rhiannon Melissa Macha at your service. I have a Welsh first name, and an Irish surname you see. They both go back rather a long way. And me middle name is Greek though they say it's originally from the Hittites. "

"You could say my family has been around for a long time", she added with a light laugh. "Now what is your name dearie? I'm sure it is very pretty."

"Well, me name's Helen Peachey, but me mam's name was Thirza Moss. Most just call me Nellie."

"Oh I was right to be sure, to be sure! You're a bright peach!" exclaimed the old woman delightedly. "And you've got good solid heritage on your mother's side for you've got the honest hard work of the peat cutters behind you. What's your mother doing letting you out of her sight, I'd like to know?"

"Me mam's passed on these last few years" said Nellie sadly. "She died tryin' to give birth to her eighth child. There was nothin' we could do."

Mrs Macha took in a breath, "Oh dearie, I am sorry. And now you're findin' yourself in the family way without a family. Oh!" She stopped for a moment.

"That reminds me, I quite forgot! Con ya help me get the panniers in Nellie dearie? There they are sittin' out in the late sun. I must get them in. And there's a good net of white-claws too in there, so if you deign to stay with me for dinner there'll be them to go with the green salads."

"Of course I'll help you Mrs Macha, but I think I must get on as I need to find somewhere to sleep for the night. I'd rather not sleep under a hedge."

"Oh bless you child, there's no need for that! You con stay here as long as you like. You need some time to think!"

Nellie jumped up and smiling through her tears went with Mrs Macha to bring the harvest of greens and herbs into the safety of the snug little cottage.

Through the lowering sunbeams of late afternoon, a late bee buzzed, circling three times over their heads.

…


	4. Chapter 4: Whiteclaws & Fat Hen

**Chapter 4: White-claws and Fat-Hen**

Monday 8th, Tuesday 9th & Wednesday 10th May 1876.

The Sharries, Stretton-on-Fosse

...

Summary: Nellie and Mrs Macha come to terms and forge an agreement on a pathway forward for Nellie.

...

Once they got the panniers inside, Mrs Macha busied herself stringing some of the herb bunches up in her front sitting room. She had a clothes rack on a pulley hung from the ceiling and it was onto this she laid out and hung the mugwort, the rue, the pennyroyal and the one Nellie didn't know.

"Mrs Macha, I know the rest of your herbs here, but may I ask what the grey herb with the purple flowers is?"

"Of course Nellie dear" she replied. "That'll be catnep. It makes a fair tea for all sorts of tings. It'll certainly help you get drowsy if you conner get to sleep right… bring out a sweat for a fevered child and it might help in other ways too," she added matter-of-factly.

Nellie sat quietly watching Mrs Macha, feeling a calmness she had not felt for a very long time. Her sprightliness and confident purpose was a balm. She had taken off her welsh hat and this revealed a glossy white slightly yellowed head of hair, caught up in a large bun on the top of her head, tightly bound in a little net of yellow lace.

The little house was a house of peace and quiet industry. There were no masters or mistresses or housekeepers to make her cringe. And there were no children, nor any of their demands... nor the smell of their nappies drying by the kitchen stove.

Then Mrs Macha pattered off into the kitchen and came back with a large bowl into which she and Nellie placed the tender leaves from fat-hen, dandelion, lambs lettuce, violet and chicory and a little bunch of chives from out of the front garden. They ripped them all with their fingers and then into all this went a little raspberry vinegar. The stems and older leaves were placed in a pail outside the front door.

"For Liath in the morning" said Mrs Macha.

She then popped a pot on to boil over a little stove in the kitchen and brought back in a small yellow cheese. She cut two slices each and wrapped one slice in fresh cress and offered it to Nellie. Nellie took it shyly and had a little nibble. Before she knew it, she had popped the whole lot in her mouth and was chewing it merrily. It was delicious! Sharp smoky cheese and the hot cress was just the remedy. They whet her appetite and swept the horrors of her day away.

Once the water was boiling, Mrs Macha took the wet bag of white-claws out to the kitchen and emptied them in. A few minutes later she had hooked them all out and came back into the front room with them in a clean cloth which she laid out to cool. Whilst they waited, they drank hot balm tea.

Mrs Macha deftly took the tail meat out of the white-claw shells and washed them some more in a bowl of water, and then tossed them through the green salad with a spoon. Then with her fingers and the spoon, she served a large pile onto a plate for Nellie and another one for herself.

It was not the food that Nellie usually ate, but it was so fresh and bitey and delicious that when she had finished, she found her eyes wandering back to the bowl. This was nothing like the pieces of mutton and mashed turnip, cabbage and potato and dumplings she was used to. It was all fresh and wild and only picked that day. There was enough for another spoonful and then a piece of dark bread to sop the juices. Nellie could feel it all doing her good.

Night had now fallen and in the candle light, Mrs Macha showed her to the bedroom. There were two narrow beds with iron frames covered in creamy wool blankets, thick linen sheets and a flat pillow each. Mrs Macha gave her a nightcap drink of catnep tea. "It'll help soothe the morning sickness dearie", was all she said.

After sipping the tea, sitting on the edge of her bed, Nellie climbed in gratefully and went off to sleep slowly, listening to the old woman's breathing descend into a light snore.

...

Nellie had had the most restful night, the deepest sleep in a long time. By habit, she stirred in the pre-dawn darkness and after a brief moment, remembered clearly where she was. She found herself refreshed and no longer confused. And ready to make her decision. She listened for Mrs Macha's breathing across the little room, but it could not be heard. So Nellie got up, reached under the bed, found the pot and relieved herself. Then she dressed in the darkness and opening the bedroom door, went through the kitchen to tip her wee out under the hawthorn tree.

Mrs Macha was up and whistling a merry tune as she stoked the kitchen stove, a beeswax candle inside a cut class cylinder casting a twinkling light. Nellie could see a large iron pot on the stove already stuffed with herbs; and a smaller pot of porridge just beginning to bubble. Mrs Macha nodded briskly at Nellie as she passed through and when she returned they both sat down to porridge and cream in the front room. It was then Mrs Macha asked her the question that had hovered between them since they had met.

"Now Nellie dearie, I must ask you, do you intend to have a baby or do you want some help to make the pregnancy go away?"

Nellie faltered in her eating. This morning there had been no sickness, but the question made her quail.

"Oh, Mrs Macha, your question sore troubles me. I don't rightly know what to say. I've prayed to God and asked for his help but I can't quite make up my mind."

"I know that very well dearie. You're a bright young thing and this is no question I ask lightly and neither should your answer be given lightly. It's a journey you'll be going on either way. Now, I don't bind you to your answer, but could you tell me please which way your thinking leans? Time flies with these things and we'd best be doing if you're of a mind to proceed. Tomorrow if possible."

Nellie looked at her, her brow knitted, let out a deep breath and said gravely, "Well, I worry it's against what the church says, but my thinking leans towards proceeding Mrs Macha. I would be ever so grateful."

Mrs Macha nodded briskly again. "Yes, it is very vexing aint it. Very well then. Any questions?"

Nellie was a little embarrassed but said, "Some say your business is of the devil if you don't mind me sayin', but it's hardly me fault what that brute done to me is it? And I am determined to not wreck my life because of it. I think God must've led me to you. I'm not ready to be a mum yet and that's flat. Me mum was younger than me when she started children and she never stopped… well, till she stopped!" She gave a little sob and gathering herself said, "And I know Frank would want a few years start without kiddies and I want a clean start to married life. I want our first child to be made with love. Is that so wrong?"

"I'm not really the one to be axin' about this dearie, for I'm always of a mind to let the lady decide for herself what's right for her. But if it sets your mind at ease, fate led you to me, that's clear enough Nellie. But your thinking is sound to my mind. Just one thing. I will need you to cross my palm in silver after we're done. Con you do that dearie?"

Nellie nodded, clutching the purse that she had been given the day before.

"Well then, if you're ready, I'm about to make up this brew and you'll be needin' to drink it up startin' tomorrow mornin'. Seven large doses over the course of the day mind. And I must ask you to eat nothing after this porridge. Just a little warm goats milk to sip if you're feelin' faint."

…

Wednesday 10th May 1876

The Sharries, Stretton-on-Fosse

So beginning early the next day, Nellie drank the strong brew, one cup at a time and she got so used to its awful flavour it became easier to get down. There was the bitter of mugwort, the strange and disturbing scent of rue, the fresh minty intensity of pennyroyal, and the slightly savoury flavour of catnep... but it was sweetened with honey from Mrs Macha's hives. By the time noon time came, she was well and truly in need of a lie down and feeling rather queasy. She was breaking into a sweat.

By about mid-afternoon, Nellie drank the last mouthful of the strong tea and settled back against the pillows that Mrs Macha plumped up around her. The last was a pillow stuffed with dried mugwort flowers and leaves that rustled and crackled and gave off a pleasant herbal scent laced with honey and it was into this that Nellie found herself enveloped, beginning to drift.

Mrs Macha mopped her brow, helped her to relieve herself again, then offered Nellie another tea, this time of Valerian, Birch Leaf, Willow Bark and more Catnep. This almost tasted worse. She was rather relieved when she finally felt herself slipping away. Just before sleep took her, she felt Mrs Macha's finger apply a little something to her forehead, leaving a damp warm spot. As sleep took her, she could still hear Mrs Macha tapping about the room and the spot on her forehead seemed to glow and enlarge in her mind, almost as if it was a little round window towards which she was being drawn.

Then she knew no more.

…

Notes: Village wise-women and midwives have been a feature of human existence for time immemorial. These crucially important people maintained carefully guarded knowledge of herbs and other simples to solve many problems including the induction of abortion. This enabled birth spacing and the interruption of pregnancies which were placing too great a strain upon bodies that were often too young or under nourished. All the herbs I have used in this story are or were, traditionally used for the purposes I have named, although the method, combination and order of delivery I have made up entirely. I used to work for a sexual health service and I encountered some interesting books and articles which captured the stories of women who have had abortions. Some of these stories were powerful documents about the intensely private and sacred bond between a woman and the growing foetus and some emotional and spiritual pathways for women in purposefully letting go of life in their wombs and how they come to a place of peace about this. The next chapter will take us to Nellie's inner journey and what she does immediately thereafter.

…


	5. Chapter 5: Cloudland & Wychwood Moss

**Chapter 5: Cloudland and Wychwood Moss**

May & June 1876

...

After all was over, Nellie gradually remembered a dream that she was sure she had originally had that afternoon and evening. She was only able to string it together gradually in her waking mind after several weeks had passed. Snatches of the dream would come back to her like wisps of cloud, sometimes in day dream, as if half remembered from the previous night. Others fragments came to her as vivid waking dreams and it was after one of these, she finally pieced it all together by speaking it to Mrs Macha.

In the dream, the glow on her forehead enlarged, its edges rolling back until it seemed to envelop the whole dim room. Nellie could look across and see on the back wall an intricately coloured door as if a huge church window telling a wonderful story about some saint's life.

Sitting on the bed opposite was a glowing golden figure. It gestured to the door and Mrs Macha's voice could be heard to say "You can go through if you like dearie. I think you'll meet someone there you've been wanting to see for a very long time. But mind, don't stay too long."

Nellie found herself standing at the door and opening its diamond handle. The wide door swung away and she saw a bright sun shining its yellow beams down onto thick grey and white clouds, scudding and churning in a breeze. Peeping through their gaps, as if she were a bird in the sky, she could see down onto the rolling hills and forests of Home. And in the midst were the low fens and bogs of a great Moss.

Into the folds of the green land, cottages were tucked. As she studied them she spied a familiar cottage. It was her grand-mother's house in Ascot-under-Wychwood, the home in which her mother had been born and died. It was unmistakeable. She stepped through the door and in a moment found herself moving down through the clouds, her legs working, almost as if she were treading water, to keep herself afloat. Its golden thatch was beautifully trimmed and shone in the sunbeams. Its rich red brick and oak timber beams and lintels gleamed. It was far more beautiful than she had remembered. As she alighted on the grass the door of the cottage opened. Out stepped a short woman in long blue and white striped skirts with a crisp white blouse. It was her mother Thirza, alive and well! There was none of the tiredness and worry of endless childbirth nor the grey pallor of her final hours. Her cheeks were young, firm and smiling.

Nellie flung herself into Thirza's arms sobbing with relief and found herself wrapped in the greatest comfort she had known for a long time. She was unsure how long she stayed in that embrace but it could have been hours. It was only as she drew apart, she noticed a young child staring up at her curiously.

"Nellie, this is your youngest brother Henry".

...

Nellie stayed for some time. It was impossible to tell how long. Days seemed to become weeks. Weeks, months.

She worked cutting peat, planted vegetables, cooked wonderful food and went on long rambling walks. She found that if she pumped her legs in quite the right way, she could fly up above everything and see far and wide, as if she were paddling in a clear sea. She met many other people to whom she was related. There was her own grand-mother, her great grand-mother, her great grand uncles, cousins thrice removed and more beside. All youthful, strong, and healthy. There was always enough to eat and their teeth were beautiful. There was rain and sun in gentle balance. The vegetable gardens were all beautifully tended. There were turnips, radishes cabbages, beets, mangel-wurzels, carrots, lettuces, onions & others for which she had no names.

At some moment in the dream, she was working fit to bust out in the peat, stacking turves when there was a serious of painful contractions and a big twinge that made her fall over gasping. Thirza said, "Nellie, I think your time might be upon you now."

And out there right on the peat, Nellie crouched, her labour long and painful. At some point the scene shifted, and she had her mother, grand-mother and great-grand-mother all guiding and supporting her throughout her travail. But in the end Nellie found herself giving birth to a little boy. Try as she might, she could never remember whether he had been given a name in her dream.

In recalling her dream, Nellie seemed to stay for months, no, years. Nellie seemed to breast feed the child for a time but readily relinquished the child to her mother, grand-mother and great grand-mother who all seemed to perform the task with great ease and pleasure. Henry was pleased to have a playmate, someone to teach how to climb trees and how to run. It was a joy to see the child's character, but sometimes she would look upon him and be reminded about another face, a face that she did not want to remember.

Still, in this calm, reassuring place, such moments did not stick and Nellie's dream memories kept little of this feeling. Her little one knew her love and was equally embraced by all.

Nellie recalled a moment in her dream in which both children were playing in the garden, her own seemed about fouryears, Henry a few years older.

She and Thirza and her grand-mothers were out thinning the cabbages, when a little old lady came tap tapping along the lane. She had a fat grey mare and wore a Welsh hat with a bright buckle.

"Ahem!" she coughed and looked at them from under the brim of her hat with bright brown eyes like hazelnuts.

Nellie stood up brushing dirt from her bright apron. Her mother and grand-mothers joined her and accompanied her to the gate.

"Nellie, I hate to be telling you this, but if you don't come with me very shortly now, I think you'll be a stayin' here for a good long time. I'm not sure that that's your heart's desire, despite bein' with your mother and all. I con give you a few minutes to think on it if you like but that's all." It was Mrs Macha.

Nellie turned to her mother, overcome with emotion.

"I thought this'd be happenin' by and by," said Thirza. "Well my dear, I am sure we'll see you again if you choose to go now. We aint goin' nowhere and your little one will be safe and happy here, be assured of that."

Then her great-grand-mother stepped up to her and looking her full in the face said: "It's been a blessing to meet you as a grown woman young Nellie, but as soon as I seen you here, I could tell you are bound for greater adventures if you dare to embrace them, but I held me tongue see. But now I'm goin' to tell you something I think you need to hear. If you stay, things will be much the same for you here. You'll spend all the future with us and you will see your son grow to full manhood. It's all lovely. But things don't change here. Now, mark my words. If you return to life, your next few years will be hard. Hard work and hard times. There will be disappointments but a lot of love. But by and by, if the winds and clouds speak true, you're bound for the most wonderful, magical life anybody could ever imagine. No matter what, your son will be happy here and we will abide by your choice so you have no need to worry. And at the end of it all, we'll see you here again anyway, if you choose it. Blessings upon you great-grand-daughter!"

With that she kissed Nellie on the forehead, and her grand-mother and mother followed suit.

Nellie looked about her. She saw the scudding clouds, the shafts of sunlight, these wonderful ancestors, the home of perfection. But she considered a moment. Yes, there was more to come. Something else beckoned. She looked up through the garden and saw her son happily playing with his young uncle in the chestnut tree and walked over. Her son climbed down and slipped from a lower branch into her arms. She cuddled him for a few minutes whilst she stroked his silky hair, their warmth soaking into each other. But then he wriggled out of her grasp and whispered knowingly into her ear, "Goodbye Mummy" and gave her a kiss on the cheek. With a cheery smile he clambered up into the branches and began to play again. There was nothing else to be said. He was content. She walked down from the chestnut, walked past her mothers and stepped out into the lane.

Mrs Macha took her hand, helped her up onto Liath, swung up in front of her with surprising agility and off they cantered. The clouds came down and they were enveloped and that always seemed to be the end of the dream.

…

When Nellie came to and opened her eyes, she was crying and it was morning. She found herself lying in Mrs Macha's bedroom in Stretton-on-Fosse. Mrs Macha was holding her hand, looking at her concernedly with her bright brown eyes like hazelnuts. The window was ajar and Liath was also looking through at her. Nellie's head swam. Her forehead no longer felt like it was glowing and her belly felt horribly cramped.

Rolling onto her side, she saw a spot of blood on the floor. She felt between her legs and found that she had been packed with soft rags.

It took some days before Nellie could rise properly beyond peeing in the pot and she was horribly weak. Mrs Macha brought her chicken broth with greens to sip with sops of bread and gradually Nellie returned to health.

She felt very sad for some weeks and often turned her head to the wall hoping the world would go away, but as the wisps of her dream gradually began to come to her, and she pieced it together with Mrs Macha, she began to feel much better. But it was all very mysterious. She could have sworn it had really happened.

Mrs Macha's confidence and generally industriousness could not be ignored and Nellie took to polishing Mrs Macha's pots and pans and the brown and cream crockery which sat on the mantle and the dresser, washing clothes, baking bread, tending the fruit trees and sweeping the path.

They ate sparely but there was always enough to eat. Mrs Macha made a little money to buy flour and oats, sugar, milk, cream and vinegar by selling ointments and tonics. But as Stretton-on-Fosse was such a small village in the midst of wide farmlands with only other small villages, there was not a lot of public custom. Nevertheless, Nellie did hear money changing hands when sometimes a quiet knock would come at the door in the dead of night and Mrs Macha would rise and slip up the hall with a little bottle of something that she had brewed up the day before and Nellie would hear muffled conversations.

When her menses returned, Mrs Macha celebrated with her and they had a cup of tea and scones with sharp elderberry jam and cream.

Once she got some further strength back, Nellie began going on country rambles with Mrs Macha, sometimes riding on Liath, helping her forage in the hedgerows for berries and chanterelles, herbs and greens, netting white-claws and catching the occasional eel in Mrs Macha's eel-pot.

It was a peaceful time and she came to realise that if she had the choice that she could happily continue with this sort of existence for a long time to come. But her own money did not increase. Indeed, her work for Mrs Macha would not help pay for her own flour and cream, so her tidy nest egg was now noticeably reduced.

But it was on one of their rambles about out of the village, on May Lane, nearly to Ebrington, that they passed a farm wall over which they could see a row of farm labourers bending low hoeing the ground. There was something familiar. Nellie leaned on the wall, and looked over. One of them was Frank!

…


	6. Chapter 6: Sugarbeets & Beestings

**Chapter 6: Sugarbeets and Beestings**

…

Tuesday 4th July 1876

May Lane, Ebrington

…

Nellie called to him. He straightened up, and stared hard for a moment, his short sandy beard glowing in the sunlight, before his grey eyes glinted with happiness to see her. He had a quick word with his fellows and skipped across the clods and the sugar-beet leaves to the stone wall. It was festooned with fumitory, dock and harts tongue, and crowned with ash and hazel. He leapt up and swung onto the hedge-wall using a branch from the ash, and jumping down stood panting slightly, glowing as he bobbed his head shyly at her and Mrs Macha.

"Morning Missus. Hello Nellie, I wondered when I would be seeing you next."

"Hello Frank. You look like you're working hard." She was hot all over and felt herself getting pink.

"I am that. As you know, there' not much rest for us on the farm. The land must be hoed to keep the weeds down for the carrots, beets and taters and that takes a fair haul. And the barley don't harvest itself neither. Like I told you, we only get one day off every three months. We have a lay preacher here for most Sundeys. But I have a day a comin' next Sundey, if you'd like to join me grandparents and me at church and mebbe a bit of soup and bread at table? But then I hazard yon'll be fetching and scrubbing in the big 'ouse at the Fosse...'?" His voice trailed upwards in enquiry but he kept his eye fixed on her face.

He could see Nellie looked a little troubled and wondered at her silence.

But Mrs Macha stepped in. "Your promised one here has taken a bit of time away from the big house Master Frances. She's a stayin wit me for a time till she finds herself new employment."

Frank looked grave and non-plussed. "If you be in any trouble Nellie, just say the word and I'll find you a cot at me grands. Surely you can't have forgot where they live?"

"I know where they are Frank. To tell you truly, I have been meaning to pay them a call, but I had a terrible time at the big house and Mrs Macha here has given me a place of peace and I didn't want to cause them, or you… any undue worry. Oh, and Frank, I'm a'learning so much from her. I almost feel like I could name all the plants and creatures of the hedgerows and fields now, as if I was Queen of the Faeries, the way I'm goin'… and write them down too if I had a mind, " she added proudly.

She saw his face fall and then remembered that Frank had never learned to read and write.

"Oh dear, now Frank, of course I shall come to church on Sunday and I would be so pleased to see your grandparents again."

"I shall come and escort you there Nellie," declared Frank, his face pleading, fingers making knots. "But I don't know which house you be in."

"My little cottage is down on the Sharries", put in Mrs Macha. "It be only a short step after the road turns up Tankard's Hill, as your grandmother will remember well, Master Frances. The one on the left wit' the horse field and the bright flowers. You tell her and she'll point you the way, you mark my words."

"Can't say I've ever noticed it meself" said Frank. "Funny that, I been runnin' around this village and climbin' up the trees since I were up to your knee. Oh, well. I'll be comin into the village on Saturday night so I'll come up bright and early to get you to church Nellie."

There was a quick "Hoi!" from the field and Frank looked over his shoulder across the hedge and a shadow of anxiety came over his face.

"Oh! The overseer! I got to get back quick smart!"

With that Frank vaulted over the wall and ran helter-skelter across the clods and beets back to his work mates.

…

About ten minutes later, it was as Nellie and Mrs Macha were cutting some wayside herbs only a few steps further down the lane and loading them into the panniers that they heard the crack of a whip and a man's voice shriek.

Nellie started with shock and was in tears with worry and concern. Mrs Macha's face took on a hard grim cast that was a fright to behold. Her eyes turned to flints and she began muttering under her breath. But after a little, she appeared to settle on something and her face brightened and shifted once more into a steady business-like cheerfulness.

Somehow they managed to get back to Mrs Macha's cottage. Nellie was still in tears and went to bed full of worry. So Mrs Macha gave her a draught of various herbs with honey to help her calm and get to sleep.

But Mrs Macha stayed up herself, saying she had a task to do. As Nellie was drifting off to sleep she could have sworn she heard Mrs Macha's voice softly singing or muttering something as she trudged firstly around the outside of the house and then over the stove in the kitchen, whilst she fed sticks into the fire. Nellie could hear them making a crackling sound that seemed to enter into her inner ears before blurring into a long indistinct buzz, almost like the angry buzzing of bees. The last thing she was aware of was the scent of honey which seemed to rise from the dregs of her cup and fill the room.

…

Wednesday 5th July 1876.

The Sharries, Stretton-on-Fosse

…

The next morning the garden and field beside was thick with bees. The air was filled with them. Every flower was a'buzz with them. The trees were covered in a shifting festoon and they were crawling around the window frames. Mrs Macha made sure the doors and windows were shut tight and warned Nellie to not go outside for a little while until they were gone. Nellie was in awe, only once having seen a swarm of bees in a large knot on a tree branch, but nothing like this.

By and by, Mrs Macha wrapped her Welsh Hat in fine net, donned some long gloves and had Nellie let her out onto the back path and the field before closing the door. Nellie watched her through the tiny back window and saw Mrs Macha disappear through the little gate to the side of the hawthorn into Liath's field.

Nellie went up to the sitting room and looked out at the bees through the yellow curtains again.

By-and-by she noticed the bees had seemed to stop circling and crawling and they were all settled down on one surface or another, turning things black. They now sat quite still, almost as if they were waiting for something, the air now clear.

Nellie watching, was just about to go and open the door and look outside when all of a sudden, the entire swarm of bees lifted off every surface with a loud hum of their wings and swung hovering in a cloud about five feet from the ground.

Then, in moments they were gone, like a cloud of hot wood smoke propelled by a stiff wind.

A few moments later, Mrs Macha came back indoors through the kitchen and briskly took off her hat and gloves and said "Now, that's settled. The bees have all gone. Wondrous thing, nature aint it?"

So they opened the windows and doors and now sat with a fine warm breeze as they ate their breakfast.

But if Nellie had been brave or foolhardy enough to sneak after Mrs Macha and look over the fence to the field she would have seen and heard Mrs Macha standing in the middle of the field making a sing-song kind of chant over and over before raising her hands skyward. And if Nellie had been brave or foolhardy enough to have stayed a little longer again, she would have seen Mrs Rhiannon Melissa Macha's left hand flick off to the north west and her right hand flick off to the south east, and she would have heard her say in a raised voice, "Anois a bheith as! Chun do ghnó!"

But she didn't and so she was none the wiser.

But even so, having seen Mrs Macha return inside and be so business-like about such a strange sight, after two months of living there, Nellie knew better than to ask too many questions.

…

Wednesday 5th July 1876

Lansdowne House and the High Road, near Stretton-on-Fosse

.…

Master Hendry Lansdowne, elder son of the Lansdowne family, jammed the last of his devilled kidney and pork sausage, dripping with Worcester into his mouth and chewed fulsomely. Then he sopped up the remaining juices with a thick slice of white bread spread generously with yellow butter. Savouring the moment, he rolled the last around in his mouth and swallowed, sucking the flavour from his teeth and gums. Then, taking the coffee pot, he poured himself another generous cup of the black bitter coffee he preferred and tipped it back in three large slurps.

His younger siblings of school age had all been sent off to school and his mother was acting as instructor of the two sisters who were now fifteen and sixteen. They were learning embroidery, deportment and piano. He had seen his two younger sisters walking around and curtseying with bags of flour balanced on their heads to practice being poised and ladylike, but he thought they still let their bellies stick out too much. The youngest of the lot, little Edward and Anne, were still in the care of the nurse Mary-Ann upstairs in the nursery. He could hear one of them letting out a squeal of rage about something, quickly hushed. A pity she was so much under his mother's eye and therefore off-limits, for she had a buxom comeliness that appealed to his tastes.

He wiped his beard and clean-shaven lips with a pressed napkin. Then pushing his chair back with a loud scraping sound, he adjusted his trousers, pushed the hair back on one side of his head behind his ear as he walked towards the door of the breakfast room. But just before exiting he turned and stroking his beard, took a long lingering glance at the curves of the kitchen maid who had come in nervously behind him to clear the plates.

Despite being berated loudly by his father nearly two months before, Master Hendry was not about to let his interest in the opposite sex wane. Indeed the attempt by his father to shame him, had only aroused his interest further. In the three years since Master Hendry had made it his habit to stalk and corner the maids of the Lansdowne House and the girls of villages and towns further afield, he had uncovered certain unsavoury truths about his own father. Rumour in the danker places he had haunted so far, had it that his father's seed had already spread far and wide, back in his day, indeed not so long ago either. So as far as Master Hendry was concerned, he was only treading the same ground as his father, who was thus a hypocrite. Master Hendry had already pressed several biddable girls into his service whom he had had suspicion might even be his own bastard half-sisters. This thought had always given him an extra frisson as he bent them over chairs or pushed them onto beds or couches and made them squawk into his hand while he worked up a sweat.

The cut to his allowance had been an annoyance, but Master Hendry was not so silly as to spend everything he received from his father. He had been putting away a tidy five pounds a fortnight, for the last eighteen months in an account that his father had no knowledge of, so it really was no matter.

This morning he was due to be involved in some property conveyancing and had the papers in his shoulder satchel ready to be signed and witnessed. Master Hendry returned up the stairs and entered his room. He looked about. Things were not quite as he liked them. A pity that that junior maid Nellie had been dismissed. She had always down a good job in making up his bed, tidying his dresser and wiping up the unmentionable spillages that he had deliberately left for her entertainment. 'Thorough' he called it. He recalled the careful strategising and effort with timing it had taken to get her cornered and compliant. Nearly eighteen months of steady attention. But worth it in the end. He'd got her in position at least seven times before she was dismissed. He smirked to himself as he remembered some of those exquisite moments and felt himself stir in memory.

But this morning was a new day and he fancied he had seen a delightful dairy maid the last time he was at the farm only two miles outside the village, that he was due to ride to.

He decided to not brush his teeth or freshen his breath. The business at the farm was brief and his belief was that the girls he pursued were more likely to buckle if they were overwhelmed by the exotic scent of coffee and the visceral perfume of kidneys on his breath. A few minutes later he was crossing the yard, crunching gravel under his boots as he strode towards the stables. The stable-hand had his horse ready and Master Hendry jumped on, had the stirrups adjusted slightly and then rode off down the drive to the road.

He turned right at The Green intersection and followed along the lane until he got to the High Road. It was only 50 yards along this road that Master Hendry heard a strange soft humming sound. Turning in his saddle he saw a dark cloud to his left and as it descended, the sound turned from a soft hum to a louder one. He pulled the horse cautiously to a halt and watched as the cloud came lower and he saw that it was a swarm of insects; bees or hornets if he was not mistaken. They crossed the road in front of him and for a moment he thought they were passing cross country to his right, but as flocks of birds or schools of fishes do, the cloud of bees swung round imperceptibly, darkening as they changed direction and before he knew it, they had flown right around him. The proximity of the passing buzz of wings made his horse shy and he had to fight the horse a little to stay steady. But swinging about again, Master Hendry looked briefly behind and saw that the bees were on the verge of doubling back yet again.

Just as he was about to ride forward, the first of the swarm hit him. One, two, three, ten, twenty, a hundred bees settled onto his back and shoulders and on his arms. More settled his head and they began crawling onto his forehead, into his ears and under his collar. By this stage he was too panicky to notice that his horse had been left well alone, and be began to try to brush them off.

Of course as we all know this is the very worst thing to do to a bee and within moments, Master Hendry Lansdowne was in an agony of terror and pain. No matter where he steered his horse, more of the angry swarm seemed to descend. Somehow Master Hendry dismounted and leaving his horse to wander, floundered about trying to run towards a pond that he knew not too far away, thinking that he would at least drown the bees that were already on him. But by this time he had progressed more than a few yards, he was blinded by pain and the need to keep his very eyes closed.

He found himself tumbling to the ground, crushing some of the bees in his fall, but more continued to buzz loudly around him, stinging every square inch of bare skin once, only to be replaced by more which stung him again, to be followed by yet more. Shortly thereafter Master Hendry's breathing became difficult and in his efforts, bees began to crawl into his mouth and throat and stung him further.

It was the groom who found the body about one hour later, after the horse returned riderless but unharmed and he went searching. As he pounded back in to the Lansdowne house yard and banged on the door to blurt out the news, the vision of horror that he had seen was so great that he could not get out the words and vomited all over the shoes of Mister Lansdowne.

…


	7. Chapter 7: Linen Blouses & Deuteronomy

**Chapter 7: Linen Blouses and Deuteronomy**

Sunday 9th July 1876

The Sharries & St Peter's Church, The Green, Stretton-on-Fosse

...

All was quiet but cooler for the rest of the week and somehow Nellie felt calmer and stronger about Frank, thinking that maybe it had simply been a farm labourer crying out and cracking a whip over a bullock pulling a plough. But she felt in her heart that this was not the case and she steeled herself for what she was about to learn, come Sunday.

Sunday dawned with a fair breeze and there was warmth in the air. Once the sun rose, there were high fluffy clouds scudding across a blue, blue sky. It promised to be a fine day for church-going and catching up with Frank's family. She prayed and hoped he would be alright.

Nellie was up early. She breakfasted before sunrise with hot salty porridge and a knob of butter washed down with a cup of mint tea and was out sweeping the front path and under the door mat an hour earlier than needed, before doing a spot of weeding amongst the foxgloves and poppies which she took round to the field to feed to Liath.

Then she went indoors, washed her hands, changed into her Sunday best and sat out on the garden wall to await Frank. She had bound a white scarf around the back of her head and under her chin, but revealing her dark hair parted severely down the middle from crown to forehead. She had on a dark green linen blouse and skirts of ticking. Her only boots were oiled and polished and she had her mother Thirza's brooch at her neck.

When Frank came round the bend, he was dressed in trousers and braces and a linen shirt and twill waist coat and his knobby boots which he had polished for the occasion. And his short sandy beard shone and his bright hair was brushed back smartly with some kind of oil. But he strode with a stiff and uncomfortable gait, taking short steps, not his usual loose swing of arms and hips. Nellie put a welcoming smile on her face despite her concern, but as he got closer he seemed to not see her, his eyes searching the road ahead with a slight look of puzzlement on his face. So, Nellie sprang out onto the road to greet him.

"Hello Frank" she said brightly.

Frank jumped a little and winced. She took his hand looking at him with concern, wanting to touch his back but afraid she might hurt him further.

"Ho now, Nellie, where did you just spring from? I thought we was meeting you at a cottage?"

But then as he looked again at the wall upon which Nellie had been sitting, he saw the cot and garden and the gate into the field he had just passed.

"Funny thing, I must have been in a daze! I didn't see aught of that, just empty fields! Oh that is a pretty spot. Well now, it is a grand thing to see you Nellie," he said, turning to look at her.

Nellie stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. "Oh, Frank it is fine to see you, but I think you must have got into trouble because of me. We heard someone being whipped and beaten! It was you wasn't it?" She stared at him with sharp concern.

Frank just nodded briefly and said "Yes, but I'm not the first there's been see, and I'm not the worst neither. The overseer, God-rest-his-soul, made quite a 'abit of it. But don't think on it Nellie, I'll be right as rain in a few days. I'm not too torn up, unlike some I've seen. And mebbe I shouldnta come running to you like that. I just missed you so much that's all."

Nellie squeezed his hand and looked up at him some more with a tear in her eye and just breathed his name.

Turning slowly, with her hand on his arm, they walked silently back along the Sharries in an eastward direction, just revelling in being together sharing each other's warmth. They crossed Belcony and continued along The Green bending to the South until they could see the steeple of the rebuilt St Peters Church reaching above the trees. The bell began to chime, a steady call across the village.

As they waited at the crossing for a curricle and a few riders on horseback to cross Belcony, Frank suddenly said, "Oh, I clean forgot." He turned and presented Nellie with a pink rosebud taken from his waistcoat pocket.

Nellie accepted it shyly and poked it in her buttonhole. He looked her full in the face and said, "Nellie, you do look fine."

Then he continued, "Now, I won't ask too much about why you left the big 'ouse, but I must know something. And I'm a bit worried about what's goin' to happen to our dream of going out to Australie if you've no pennies comin' in? I'm workin' fit to bust and I'm learnin' a whole lot about raising honest food from the field, but me wage is too little to save much to get us there."

Nellie gulped a little but said "Frank, I do have to tell you something. I must. But it's hard for me to speak it." Her voice was welling with tears and she took a few long slow breaths before beginning again.

"Something terrible happened to me in that house Frank. I, I w-won't mince me words. The young gentleman of the house… he, he, he, well he did something horrible to me…"

Frank's grey eyes were all concern and his lip quivered but he said nothing yet apart from breathing a soft "Oh Nellie…" He just held her hand more tightly.

By this time she was going to belt it out through the choking voice regardless.

"…and more than once! Oh Frank, I was livin in terror everytime I heard a board creak. I couldn't sleep. Then the missus worked out what had gone on. How could she not? Me belly was startin' to show and I was sick every morning. Mister Lansdowne told his son off. Real loud it was. The whole house heard. I thought the sky would fall in. So I lost me job and was turfed out. I was feeling sorry enough to jump into a ditch. Then Mary-Ann, she's the nurse for the littlies, comes running down the lane after me. Seems the Mister took some of his son's allowance and asks her to run after me with it. And the other servants must have done a quick collection, cause there were a few farthings and two hapnies in the purse too. I still got most of it, I have. Some I give to Mrs Macha for board… and things. It's all over now, but for a little while there, I was going to have a baby. But not now."

"But not now?" Frank asked.

"No, for I lost it see. It's gone to heaven. It 'appens sometimes, as I'm sure you know. Sad though the whole story be, I've been very lucky. And Mrs Macha helped me out and give me somewhere to get well again. I feel so much braver now. I think I could face anything. Though if I saw the one who forced me, I think I should still run a mile."

At that moment a bee brushed past the flower in her button hole and was gone.

That made Frank jump again and wince further. "What's the matter Frank, it were only a bee," said Nellie.

"Aye, and the very man who whipped me has just died from a swarm of bees only four days ago!" he said in a hushed tone. I reckon we need to watch our step around them."

That brought Nellie up a bit and she found herself doing a bit of wondering.

But she said, "Well, Frank, it seems like he were a mighty unpleasant man, but if he's dead, he's dead and we shan't speak further ill of him. It's church day and I think we should do our very best to pray for his soul."

With those words Frank had no argument and so they continued walking along together, each in their own thoughts. Belcony was now clear, so they crossed and walked down onto The Green. It was a fine summer's morning and the blackbirds and goldfinches were singing and there was even the sound of a skylark far above.

But Frank was troubled. "I, I don't know what to say Nellie. Seems we've both been wronged, you far more badly than me. You made a lucky escape. So I won't ask you no more for the moment, leastways about what happened to you. As for the money, I'm sure you can look after it. But by-and-by, before we marry, we must put our pennies together and work out how much more we'll need before we tie the knot and make our way. Just getting to the ships at Plymouth will cost us of course."

"Oh Frank, you are a kind man. I'm so glad it is you and no-one else. We can sit and count our pennies as soon as you want."

…

They continued down along the lane, nodding politely to others who were coming across the green toward St Peter's and stepping out of the way of several traps and curricles which had come in from the farmlands thereabouts and one or two hay-carts bearing parties of farm labourers.

Then the bells came to their final peals and Nellie and Frank clutched each other's hand the tighter as they each remembered they might be likely to encounter people they did not wish to see. But this was church and common ground for all, so there was nothing to be done but step up the grassy hillock and towards the church door. There just a few yards away from the door, positioned so as to let in their betters first stood Frank's grandmother Eleanor and grandfather John, Frank's own mother Sarah who was thirty-eight and another of the grand-children Harriet now thirteen, daughter of Sarah's sister Eleanor. They smiled when they saw Nellie but this was tempered with concern for their grandson who they knew, better than Nellie, how much his injuries hurt him.

Into the church they went after a few better dressed folks and they sat in the back pew on the left. Grandfather first, shuffling in looking a little sore in the hip, then Grandmother Southam, then Harriet, then Sarah, then Frank, and lastly Nellie. There was one seat left in the aisle and Nellie looked politely about to see if anyone was in need of a seat. As she looked back over her shoulder she noticed a face she recognised walking through the door. It was Mary-Ann Bartlett. Her hair was parted and pulled back severely just like Nellie and most of the other working women in the church. She also was dressed similarly although her skirts were of finer stuff than Nellie's. She beamed at Nellie and delightedly came and sat next to her. But she also had an air of distraction which Nellie longed to understand, wondering if it was the obvious lack of pregnancy which Mary-Ann was noticing, or something else that was on her mind. But they barely had whispered words of acknowledgement before the minister coughed and the service began.

Nellie was barely listening. She began to wonder if the Lansdowne family were in the church. Normally they travelled on a Saturday the twelve miles to the larger village of Chipping Norton and attended a service there on the Sunday before returning for afternoon tea in The Fosse. But she looked about, unobtrusively as possible to the front seats to see if at least Mister Landsdowne was there. But they were not to be seen.

There were hymns and a few prayers and then a senior member of the Parish stood up and did a reading from the Bible. It was all about the plagues of Egypt and the swarms of frogs and locusts that The Egyptians had brought upon themselves. Nellie found herself remembering the vision of the swarms of bees from only a few days before.

Then the Minister took his place and delivered his sermon. Initially, Nellie's mind wandered as he began to drone on, but then suddenly her attention was taken by his next words.

"… and we see this last week in our good and god-fearing district, that things of great mystery and horror may come to remind us that great sin may bring about the vengeance of God against the proud, the self-righteous or the apostate, or that the work of the devil can thrive in the midst of piety, goodness and plenty. We may not know which is which and we may find that all we can do is pray. Pray for forgiveness of our sins, pray for forgiveness of the sins of our oppressors, and pray for continued forbearance, compassion and peace in a law-abiding and loving community."

"For in Deutoronomy it is said that 'the Amorites who lived in those hills came out against you; they chased you like a swarm of bees and beat you down from Seir all the way to Hormah'. Let us take warning. There may be those in our land who wish ill-will upon others and who behave like the Amorites. We may think this must not be tolerated in the eyes of God. But let us also not forget that the Lord also has his own ways in Righteousness, for he may bring the powers of nature to our discomfiture and warning of our _own_ sins. For in Isaiah, we are told 'In that day the LORD will whistle for flies from the Nile delta in Egypt and for bees from the land of Assyria. They will all come and settle in the steep ravines and in the crevices in the rocks, on all the thornbushes and at all the water holes.'"

"In the horror and confusion of this time, let us also remember the words of Lord Jesus and not be in undue haste to cast stones at those whom we mistrust, for they may be the innocents. May the Lord guide us to apply compassion, love, forgiveness and forbearance. For the meek shall inherit the earth."

He then made direct reference to the two mysterious deaths from swarms of bees which had occurred in the district at one and the same time and named an Alister Stringer, an overseer on Charingworth Manor Farm and the Mister Hendry Lansdowne young master of Stretton-on-Fosse.

Then the Minister announced that the funerals of the two men would be held in Churchill and Chipping Norton respectively.

As everyone knelt and spoke The Lord's Prayer, Nellie found herself quivering and shaking as she shared a shocked and knowing glance at Frank. In seeking support, she found herself clutching both Frank's and Mary-Ann's hands, knowing that they both knew at least some of her reasons for agitation. So as the prayer continued and lapsed into silence, allowing Nellie's spirit to reach into that other world that she knew existed somewhere, full of clouds and peace and plenty. And it was there that Nellie found herself realising that she had found her own place of peace, compassion, forbearance and love, even if complete forgiveness still eluded her.

…


	8. Chapter 8: Breadsops & Lullabies

**Chapter 8: Breadsops & Lullabies**

Wednesday 19th July 1876

Charingworth Manor Farm

And a flashback to Sunday 9th July 1976, Southam's home and The Sharies, Stretton-on-Fosse

…

Frank George Southam rose to his feet wearily and more than a little sore, leaning on his hoe. He brushed the damp soil from his knees, pushed his mop of ginger hair and sweat out of his eyes and gazed across the field of sugarbeet towards the Fosse. He was up here doing a bit of extra by himself, mostly to get away from the team and be in his own thoughts. The rest had gone down to breakfast, leaving him to his thoughts and the furrows. From his vantage point at the top of the field, he could spy cross-country the steeple of St Peters rising through the summer haze five miles away to the south-south-east. For a few moments he closed his eyes softly and let the sun shine through them, turning all his vision a warm orange-red.

…

Ten days ago, there in that church, he had come to feel that he and Nellie were caught in currents that were more than the usual concerns of farm labourers, tinkers, glovers, overseers, house-maids, char-women or the gentry. The coincidence of the deaths by bees-sting of the very two people who had abused both he and Nellie could not be ignored. It was too uncanny. The whole church had been… well… abuzz with it.

He had crossed himself there in the church when they heard about the second death and that was not something he was much given to doing.

For Frank George Southam was a practical fellow who didn't have much truck with the symbols of religion. It was the hymns and songs of hard work and harvest; the daily appreciation of the honest blue sky and brown dirt; the green hedgerows and falling rain, which he understood and liked better. If a fellow thought he'd felt a ghost, Frank would say it was just a breath of cold air and to put the thought away and not dwell on such things. If a friend prayed tearfully to the saints when things were hard, as they often were, Frank would not join him in prayer, but would say amen at the end, then put his hand on his shoulder and give him friendship and the courage to get up and face the next day. When he was sorely troubled himself, Frank would find a place to sit quietly and facing the sun with eyes closed, let the true warm light flood through the red blood in his eyelids or he would go walking at night and listen to the soft sounds of the country dark, or on a clear night, watch the stars. It was these things which brought him peace.

But that day in the church he had been beset with such an overwhelming range of conflicting emotions that, apart from clutching Nellie's trembling hand, he found that crossing himself was truly the only thing he could do.

Nellie had of course come back to his grandparent's house with him and there they had had a lovely plate of onion and carrot soup with a small piece of hock and bits of bread to sop up the juices. They had even had a real marshmallow root and barley kernel pudding with stewed raspberries to welcome Nellie. But the tone of the table had been somber and the conversation had gone in strange directions.

Mr John Southam had a slightly sour face on a skinny neck with a bushy white fringing beard but a clean shaven face. He sometimes came to the worst conclusions about things, but had a dry sense of humour and could make light of the worst circumstances. He often stayed silent, listening for other's opinions first. This trait usually put others on their guard at first but once they got to know him, he put them at their ease. Frank had come to know his grandfather's ways and usually there was a twinkle in his eye that was the sign when some liberties could be taken with him.

But on that day the twinkle was not to be seen. As they approached home slowly on foot, speaking of the service, Mr Southam had tapped hard with his stick on the dirt and had humphed and mumbled about God finding his own ways of passing judgement. He seemed to have no difficulty in concluding that God had indeed visited his righteous wrath on two evil-doers in the neighbourhood. Between his half mumbles, he could be heard to say that for him it was simple. One bad man; that one who had abused his grandson, had suffered the wrath of God. The other man who had suffered the same fate must have likewise done bad things.

"And may they both meet further justice on the other side," he said. "The man who lifts a finger against my innocent hard working grandson _should_ know the wrath of God. I am not glad a man is dead, but I am glad he won't be harming no more labourers; leastways young Frank here. I know the evil that can be done on the farms round 'ere… mark my words I do… and those that love to deal it out. Seen more than me fair share. Many is the time I wished I been a swarm of bees meself. Show em, what for," he finished with a threatening drawl, full of dread memory .

Mrs Eleanor Southam, who would once have been a friendly rounded woman, now had a tired downturn in her nearly toothless mouth, after nine children and helping raising Sarah's two boys. As Sarah and Harriet served the soup, Eleanor said to her husband in tutting tones, "Jesus is meant to be in the business of forgiving sin Dad. It don't seem right to me, when two men, however badly behaved both of them may have been, should have the wrath of God descend upon them in quite that way. It's 'orrible what 'appened to them both."

Sarah frowned and shook her head with horror and disbelief. "We should be grateful it weren't one of us," she added looking around the table at the small gathering.

Thus it was mother and daughter set the tone for the grace at that meal and they ate in respectful silence for the remainder.

It was later as they cleaned up, that young Harriet, who knew all about what her cousin's tormentor had done to him, had wanted to know what the Lansdowne gentleman was meant to have done wrong to bring the wrath of God down on him. Nellie remained silent and didn't need the look from Frank to keep quiet.

"Oh, he was likely innocent as a lamb and it were just a horrible chance what happened to him," said Sarah, "but if not, it inner something for a young gel to be hearing nothin' about."

Frank had seen Sarah glance at Nellie shrewdly as she said this, although she did not press Nellie for any information.

Harriet had looked put out, and he guessed that she guessed quite well what the thoughts around the table had been.

But Mr John Southam had more to say on the matter. "From what I hear tell young Harriet, he was a right libertine. He done his fair share of mucking up the lives of many a girl round this district… and his father before 'im from all I can tell. You watch your step with the young men, especially if you end up going into service."

But it was quickly followed up with a cough by Mrs Eleanor Southam, "Ahem, so, Nellie dear, how you think them down at the big house might be dealing with the loss? I've had precious little char work last few days, so I've not had a chance to know much. Must 'ave come as quite a shock. That son bein' the apple of his father's eye."

"I-I-I can't rightly say Mrs Southam, not bein' employed there no more. But I spoke with Mary-Ann Bartlett after the service, she's the nurse for the littlies over there and she said it were real awful. The Master went cold as ice she said. And the Mistress went a bit strange. Had every flower removed from the house and garden she said. The whole family's packed off to their cousins in Chipping Norton for a week, even the littlies. Mary-Ann was at a loose end. She hadn't had a proper chance to come to church in a while, so she took the moment."

"So why 'ave you left your job there Nellie?" intruded Mr Southam. It was the question the whole family had been dying to ask.

"Oh Dad, that's pryin, that is," said Sarah, getting a sour look from her father. "If it's a secret, you can keep it Nellie," she added in an understanding soft aside. "Or you can whisper it in private, as you wish."

Then in a slightly clearer tone Sarah asked, "But where is you stayin, that's more to the point. If you left your job why did you not come here? We would 'ave found some kind a corner for you to curl up in, wouldn't we Dad?"

To that Mr Southam made a gruff assent but didn't add any more. But they all looked at Nellie and she saw that she would have to give some account of herself.

"I'm staying up on The Sharries, just below Tankards Hill. Mrs Macha took me in see."

Mrs Southam and Sarah gave each other a sharp look but said nothing yet.

"Never even heard of her," grumbled Mr Southam. "You sure that's her name?

"Oh yes, well at least that's the name she give me and as far as I can tell it's her true one," said Nellie. "And all the people we've met on the lanes who know her, call her by that name."

"Funny kind of name!" he added and looking at his wife and daughter puzzled said, "you ever heard of it Mum?"

"Oh Dad, of course I have!" said Mrs Southam. "She was the one I took Sarah to see before she had Frank. Don't you remember?"

He looked blank.

She turned to Nellie then and said with her toothless smile, "Frank give our Sarah here such a terrible time of it when he was growing inside, we walked over to see Mrs Macha, didn't we Sarah? She's better than the doctor and cheaper too, leastways for woman's troubles. It was funny that day, couldn't quite find her house. Though I must have missed a turn or something. But anyways, we'd just found ourselves turning about in the road when we see her lookin' over the field gate at us just as bright and old and clever lookin' as she looked when I was a gel. And there's her house nearby clear as day."

"We tell her the troubles, she takes one long glance at Sarah, and then beckons her and looks closely in her eyes and says 'I know what ails you. Come back tonight after eleven and bring me a cup of sugar and a cup of cream. I'll not take beer.' That was all if you can believe it!"

"So that night, back we went. We found the 'ouse in the night, only just mind, knocks on the door, gives her the sugar and gives her the cream and she hands over two little bottles of something and tells poor Sarah to drink the first one straight down then and there. Well Sarah did what she was told and said it tasted _like the summer sun_ if you will believe it. Yes you really did," she said looking at her eldest daughter who had scoffed a little. "Then back we comes and Sarah had to take a teaspoonful three times a day for the next two weeks and she had no more trouble. Then four months later out pops Frank here."

"And it were a funny thing weren't it Sarah. For a first time baby, you had a easy time givin' birth. Hardly a whimper! Oh yes, it were a good birth that one and young Frank 'ere never gave no more trouble, all the way through till he was three."

Nellie looked across at Frank, hoping this wasn't going to embarrass him. But seeing a gleam in his eye she was encouraged and said, "Oh and what did you do to cause trouble when you was only three Frank?"

"They always told me I was a talker, that once I learned to talk I couldn't be silenced. Drove everyone half crazed the way they talk about it. I got a few cuffs for it. I don't talk much now. Learned to keep me mouth shut." He looked across at his grand-dad with a mixed expression in his eye.

Mr Southam's blue eyes widened and then said, "Your trouble was you were up to everything when you was three." Turning to Nellie he said, "He were a terror! He used to play with axes, climb cart-wheels when horses were harnessed and about to move. And once he half-climbed half-fell down a well, and couldn't get out again, the dry one on t'other side of the Glover's," intruded John drily.

"Oh, poor thing!" exclaimed Nellie, looking across at Frank.

"Ooh yes, we couldn't find him for hours," put it Sarah. "I was worried sick."

"Oh, Frank! You were a naughty thing. Your poor mother. But you must have been terrified too," she said with feeling.

"That he weren't Nellie," grinned Mrs Southam, glad to have moved on to lighter subjects. "That's the funny thing. You just hear this." She nodded at Sarah.

Sarah continued, "When we found him, he just called up and answered our questions, good as gold. When we sent down my little brother Richard after him on a rope, he just clung on and came up calm as you please."

"But can you remember anything of it Frank?" Nellie had been amazed.

"Well, I can't be sure Nellie, I was so young. But I do have a feeling, a sort of half memory about it, like you remember a dream. I must have got a few scrapes and bruises but nothing too bad. I couldn't go nowhere, so I must have curled up a bit to keep warm and sung lullabies to meself."He laughed lightly. " The one I always liked best was the Moon Lullaby, so I think I just sung that to meself to keep me courage see. And I always felt like Mum Sarah or someone was down there with me the whole time, helping me sing it."

"Oh, Frank, that is a sweet story. I don't know that one, can you still remember it?"

"Well, erm, I'm a bit old for that sort of thing… but…"

"Come on then son, thee knows it well, it's a fine little song," put in Mr Southam. "Entertain your lady-love!"

"Yes, cheer us up a bit" put in Harriet.

"Yes, that news at church today was awful, choose how you look at it," said Mrs Southam. "We should have a few songs now. Come on, you first Frank."

With that, Frank stood up stiffly getting a little pink and standing with his hands by his sides he began:

 _I see the moon - The moon sees me - God bless the moon - and God bless me._

 _I see the stars - The stars see me - God bless the stars - and God bless me._

 _I see the world - The world sees me - God bless the world - and God bless me._

 _I know an angel - Watches over me - God bless the angels - and God bless me._

Then Sarah has brought out the accordion and Mr Southam his old fiddle there had been more singing and a bit of a jig for more than an hour.

…

Remembering that happy afternoon less than two weeks ago Frank let the sounds linger in his memory as his crew returned from breakfast and began their work again in a ragged line down the furrows.

Then, as he bent back to his work, he found himself singing quietly with a contented heart to the blue sky and the clouds and the sun and to a future with Nellie that he could not help but feel might just be of the very best.

…

For Frank had had some news only the night before that seemed like a change in his fortunes. He had laid awake until two o-clock, thrilling with the news. But he had also needed the time up here away from his fellows to think about what it would truly mean as he swung into the rhythm of the hoe free of other distractions.

What made Frank's spirits fly on this day was that he had just been told that in a few weeks' time, he would be leaving the field to work at the blacksmith forge at Charingworth Manor. He would soon be making and mending ploughs, hand tools and horse shoes and would even be learning farrier work; shoeing and hoof trimming and the like. And he would now be earning Ten Shillings, Sixpence and a Half-penny a day compared to the Eight Shillings and Nine-Pence he was now getting as a Farm Labourer. He realised that their dream of going out to Australia might just be getting that little bit closer.

Later on that Sunday afternoon, Nellie had helped him count their crowns, shillings and pennies together and written it down. She gravely told him that they still had a long way to go before they had near enough saved and they realised it might be yet more years before they could pursue their dream.

But as he swung, he remembered a particular worn piece of metal in his pocket. He could feel its gentle pressure against his thigh.

...

It had happened like this:

Before Nellie had left the Southams and before Frank had begun the long walk in the dark the seven miles back to Charingworth Farm, Nellie had agreed to come and stay back at his grandparents with their blessing. She was now helping out his mother and grandmother with their washing and char work a few days a week. And Mrs Macha had agreed for Nellie to keep helping her and learning about herb gathering and tonic-making on the other days. In all, it was not many shillings, but it was something and he knew that Nellie was the happiest he had seen her since they first met.

And when he had walked Nellie back at the end of the day, Mrs Macha had greeted them at her field gate. They had told her about Nellie going to stay at the Southam's by-and-by but Mrs Macha seemed not a whit bothered.

She had said, "Aye young Helen and Francis, there's no doubt about it. As your great-grandmother was sayin' Nellie, you've got long work and hard times ahead first but before too long you two have got the best life ahead of you that anyone could have ever imagined. That's why I reckon it'd be best for Nellie to keep a'learnin' from me about 'erbs and flowers, tonics and poultices, tisanes and tinctures, Master Francis. And a few other things... she added cryptically. For I have an inkling you'll be needing to know all about these things the beautiful place you'll be endin'up."

Frank had not been able to understand why she was mentioning Nellie's great-grandmother who must have been long passed on but she seemed to speak about their future with such certainty and authority that he could not help but feel his spirits lifting.

Then Mrs Macha had looked at him with her brown eyes under the brim of her battered Welsh hat.

"So Master Francis, I'll be expectin' Miss Helen Peachey to be spending her days with me from Wednesday through to Friday. I cannot pay in coin, for knowledge of the natural world and how to use it is a priceless thing. But at the end, when you're both ready, you shall both have a gift from me that will see you on the next stage of your lives. Mark my words. But I have something for you to be goin' on with Master Francis. They say it brings good luck to keep one of these by you and may even ward off evil."

With that, in the dusk she had handed him an old horseshoe, worn thin and smooth to the touch, no sharpness of rust. It did not seem much, but he accepted it graciously and put it in his pocket. First, he had thought to string it up next to his bed in the labourer's quarters. But he found himself wary of even showing it to his fellows, as he had the reputation of being amongst the least superstitious. So he had just kept it in his pocket every day, feeling it's weight and hard steel against his thigh.

…

It was only after a few days had gone by, when he had had a moment alone that he had drawn it out into the light of sunset to have a closer look. There plainly, were the seven nail holes, two broken through. There were the worn edges leaving one edge sharper and one end shorter. But as he had turned it about in his hands to catch the last light of day, he could have sworn it had the lustre of silver.

...


	9. Chapter 9: Kaleidoscopes and Copper Tubs

**Chapter 9:** Kaleidoscopes and Copper Tubs

Nellie has a dream that turns into reality and luck takes some interesting turns.

…

Monday 14th August 1876

The Southam Residence, Stretton-on-Fosse

…

It was Monday, the main washing day for the neighbourhood and as the Southam women did char work, Nellie helped Sarah and Harriet with the dirty washing of four households, which they lugged in baskets and a single wheelbarrow from each house back to the big laundry out the back.

"Come along Nellie, we best get the last lot," sighed Mrs Southam. "It'll be from the Bakehouse. But we have to leave their clothes till last. There is so much flour in their aprons and things, I swear we could make glue out of the washwater." She was exaggerating of course and it made Nellie giggle. She had rarely had this kind of humour to carry her through her days back at the big house and was glad of it.

Nellie found herself feeding the fire under the enormous copper with sticks and twigs and split logs and a little coke. She used a dipper to bail hot water into the wooden tubs on their stands whilst Sarah grated yellow soap and she used the dolly-stick to pound and shift the great big sheets, dresses, shirts, shifts and small items.

Nellie was good at this work, and the circular shift they set meant that Nellie was sometimes on the copper, sometimes at the washtubs, sometimes at the great big mangle and sometimes at the clothesline. The only thing she missed from the big house was a washboard, which had only just begun to be used in that part of England. They worked solidly in pairs and made the time pass as quickly as they could, for the fires and water were very hot and every muscle ached. But as there was no housekeeper looming over Nellie, telling her to work harder, they sometimes hummed well known tunes together and were able to have a rest for a nice hot cup of tea and a slice of bread and dripping when they called time themselves.

Mrs Eleanor Southam had been doing this work all her long life and took a well-earned rest from noon onwards and made a turnip and beef-bone broth before she put her feet up. Harriet, Nellie and Sarah worked with a will till five o'clock and then retired for tea. As it was high summer, they left the clothes on the lines until after tea and then went outside and together they folded the clean dry linens before stacking them in their baskets.

And with the hot stove in the kitchen making them sweat further into the late evening, they had three irons kept hot as they worked by candle-light first through the sheets and pillow cases, then the shirts and skirts, then the underwear, socks and stockings and finally the veritable mountain of nappies.

They were not abed until nearly twelve and Nellie wondered if she would ever know a life in which she did not go to bed aching in every muscle and every joint.

The next day they began all over again to finish what was left, with some thicker clothes having had to dry further overnight but also to pay attention to collars and cuffs, bodices and hems, with starching and more ironing. And then on to cleaning houses and mopping floors.

For the time being, Nellie was happy with this life. But she vowed that if she had the choice of a different one, it would be in a place in which clothes were made of something that did not need to be ironed and certainly never starched and floors that never needed scrubbing. But she had never heard of such a place and she realised she probably never would.

But as the days progressed, Nellie realised she had the best of both worlds. A few days with the Southams and she had good company and hard work, food in friendly company and a bed in a home that had become family… and some coins to put away. A few days with Mrs Macha and she was brewing decoctions, mixing salves, distilling herbal oils, and learning the names and properties of all the plants in the region for miles around. Mrs Macha even knew where some very rare plants grew and showed Nellie sly ways of keeping stock and people from disturbing them. Each day meant Nellie could apply herself to something new and she had taken to keeping an exercise book of the names and uses of the many plants that she was coming to know.

Sometimes, when Nellie was lying waiting for sleep to take her or as she was down on her knees scrubbing floors, she would also find herself making up rhymes to help remember the lore she had had passed on to her in the last few days. She found herself mumbling under her breath:

"From Netchweed or Stinking Arrach creeping, a tea to help the slow and steady seeping of women's flow. Three times a day a half cup is taken but never after eating bacon. And also make a sweetened tonic to manage children's bloating colic."

or

"Fresh flowers of Linden in hot water we slake, for tea to calm nerves and stomach ache, the sap makes syrup sweet and leaves the cattle may safely eat".

Then there was "For gravel of the kidneys grave, in boiling water, leaves of mallow strongly lave, drink cold for three days then rest for same, repeat until the kidneys tame. Hot fresh leaves and powdered root of mallow can be bound to swollen skin to draw redness out and pus therein."

She found she had quite a talent for rhyming and with all the old words she was learning from Mrs Macha, she now had a richness of language she had never thought possible.

…

Wednesday 23rd August 1876

The Sharries, Stretton-on-Fosse

In the early morning, in her bed in the corner of the Southam's tiny parlour, Nellie awoke with a wild neighing sound ringing in her head. Her eyes were wide open in the darkness, her heart beating hard, the sound still echoing and somehow behind it a little voice whispering.

Fragmented visions still flooded her mind. Seemingly at the moment of waking, she had seen Liath with her panniers in gold and a glowing figure standing nearby. If that was not startling enough, she had also seemed to be under the high scudding clouds and shafts of sunlight in that other-worldly Ascott-Under-Wychwood with her great-grandmother's house in the distance.

As is the way of dreams, the more you try to piece them together the more they slip from your grasp. So Nellie lay back down, pulled up the covers and closed her eyes again, letting herself fall back to sleep. So it was that Nellie eventually slid into dream again, and as the clouds parted once more, she could see the grey mare Liath lit by beams of sunlight under the white clouds in the emerald green of Home.

This time the childish little voice finally came to her clearly. "Mummy, I hope you like our little present," it said in a serious tone, before adding with gleeful enthusiasm, "we think he will be just the thing."

And then with the voice clear in her mind lifting to a descant giggle, an enormous bright chestnut stallion slid down from the clouds with coppery wings, larger than eagle's, larger than the wings of angels in church windows. He hovered over Liath, before touching lightly to the ground. She reared to meet and challenge him, and there began a wild cantering chase about the fields that matched the thud of Nellie's own heartbeat. The two bucking, nipping, rearing horses with tossing manes, made a shifting kaleidoscope of silvery-grey and coppery-gold.

And before long the stallion and Liath began doing what beasts will do without shame out in the broad light of day, but shrouded by the great wings of the stallion. Nellie woke for the second time that morning with a beating heart, and heat in her body, but this time with tears on her cheeks and her mind full of the vision and sound of enormous wings and a child's voice.

…

And the dream must have been extremely late in coming because it was on this day when Nellie arrived at Mrs Macha's cottage that Liath refused to leave her stall. Nellie found herself out with Mrs Macha, brushing Liath down and watching Liath's belly drop. Nellie was aghast that she had not recognised before that Liath was with foal, for she remembered that even back when she had first met Mrs Macha, the Grey Mare had seemed rather fat.

They carried the panniers themselves and collected bundles of dry grass from field edges, herbs from the hedgerows and bracken from the brakes. They swept out Liath's half-open stall and covered the floor as deeply as they could in this fragrant mix of soft and scratchy material.

Liath drank water, nosed her sides, swished her tail. She lay down, then struggled up, breathing with effort, before laying down again. This happened several times over the day. Then, in late afternoon, with the Jackdaws cawing and the blackbirds and thrushes singing their hearts out, Liath struggled to her feet again, breathing heavily and labouring. Within a few minutes a nose appeared, then two hooves and finally a wet little foal slipped out, tumbling onto the bed of rough hay and bracken. Liath just stood for some time, breathing heavily and steadying herself, before she finally turned around and licked her foal clean. Then she reached her head back between her legs and ate the dangling afterbirth, dragging it out of herself inch by inch until it disappeared, no doubt to help herself give this foal the most nourishment she could.

The colt was strong and lithe, its legs long and graceful and it grew in front of their eyes. Liath was the best of mothers. She was happy and playful, shadowing her foal but letting it run about, playing with it as it learned to run and buck and jump, her own joy evident. Mrs Macha would sometimes take a lump of sugar as a treat, one each for Liath and the colt and they would come forward and Nellie would have a chance to fondle the little one's ears and give it a scratch under the chin.

It was a strawberry roan colt, an even dappled blend of silver and chestnut. Nellie was enchanted and then her dream come flooding back and she wondered some more. To her own embarrassment, she found herself looking for wing buds at the dear little thing's shoulder… but she said not a thing about it to Mrs Macha.

…

September to December 1876

Time went by and Nellie settled in to the weekly routine of working for food and board with the Southam's on Monday washing day and for coin on Tuesdays and Saturdays. She found herself scrubbing the floors and tables, washing dishes and dusting furniture at the Ladbrooks and the Webbs, who could not afford full-time servants. And at some of the houses set aside as residences for gentleman from out of town. She even did a stint washing dishes and ale mugs at the local inn.

And this was all whilst continuing what was affectively an apprenticeship with Mrs Macha. She continued to learn about tinctures for the common cold, the making of poultices from comfrey and horseradish and all manner of teas and tisanes. She continued writing as many as she could in her book and making up rhymes in her head she could sing to herself. She even learned the essentials of how to set a broken bone after they came across a poor lamb bleating in pain which had fallen and they took it home to nurse.

In mid-October, Frank came on a Sunday visit and he and Nellie visited Mrs Macha's house after church and he applied his new farrier skills to Liath and the new colt which was growing fast and already needed to get it used to the idea. After he bid Liath good afternoon, and brushed her a little, he cleaned up Liath's hooves beautifully. Mrs Macha and Nellie stood by watching on. They saw Frank approach the little thing ever so gently, offering it first a lick of salt and then a lick of sugar, sitting down nearby to get it used to him, whilst Liath stood by swishing her tail and giving her foal a lick. After a little Frank began stroking its flanks, fondling its legs and then lifting it's hooves one at a time for a little while. Before long the little thing was leaning into Frank and he was able to do the gentlest of rasping of its little hooves, just enough to feel the burr and find that nothing bad was going to happen.

When he was finished, Mrs Macha said to him: "Aye, Master Francis, you've quite the knack I think. Now what would you be callin' the little thing? Its not been named yet."

Frank considered a while, and staring at the colt with a smile on his face, his eyes crinkling, he said, "Well Mrs, to tell the truth, this little colt looks for all the world like a dollop of strawberries and cream. I reckon Strawberry would be a fine name."

…

[Reference for herbal properties in the rhymes: Mrs M Grieves: A Modern Herbal – Jonathan Cape 1931 (Rhymes: my own)]


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